Google Chrome 9 Released for Developers

Google has officially released Chrome 9 version of its web browser in the Developer Channel for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux platforms. The new Google Chrome 9.0.570.0 build is meant for the developer channel and arrives with a number of changes listed here.

This new version comes with some security fixes and several minor changes to make it run faster. No new features are added at this moment in the experimental Chrome Labs.

Last month, Chrome 8.0.552.xx beta version was released in developer channel. With arrival of Chrome 9 we believe that a stable build of Chrome 8 would be released in the coming weeks.

Google is aiming to release Chrome 9 by November 29. While Opera 11 Alpha is already available to users for testing out new changes like Opera Extensions and HTML5 server-sent events. Hopefully, by the end of this year, we might get to use release candidates of Firefox 4.

How To Speed Up Firefox

Here’s something for broadband people that will really speed Firefox up:

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining

network.http.proxy.pipelining

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”

Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0”. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages MUCH faster now!

Customize your Firefox with useful Add-ons!

This post deals with a few useful Firefox Add-ons, which makes your Firefox more comfortable than before.

Tiny Menu:

If you are not using the menu bar frequently and you feel that the menu bar is occupying more space in your browser, then you can shrink it with this add-on. It will help to replace the standard menu bar in Firefox with a single popup icon in the menu bar. Customization on menu to be collapsed can also be made simple with its option.

IE Tab:

For some web pages, we still have to use internet explore so we have to change the browser to continue with it, but now it very easy with IE tab in Firefox. Single click will change the Firefox tab into IE tab and you can continue browsing with it without any disturbance.

Convert Web Pages to PDF:

No more tiring HTML formats for saving web page! With this add-on, web pages can be saved in PDF format. This add-on can be also used as PDF management tool in Firefox. Sometimes opening PDF files in low bandwidth makes Firefox crash but this add-on will provide the pop up option to save or open, using which the PDF file can be downloaded.

Tab Popup:

This add-on pop up displays the tab content on doing a mouse-over, which enables us to see what’s inside the page. So, no need to switch between tabs until pages are completely downloaded. Pop up size of the tab is customizable.

Splash:

It adds a screen before Firefox opens up. Any image, text or audio file can be used in the splash screen to “welcome” you.

Extended Status Bar:

This add-on provides images, speed, percentage, time and loaded size of the web page.